WHEN I had once more become aware of my surroundings, I was lying in semi-darkness on a cold stone floor. The top of my head was bruised and tender, and my neck so lame that a sharp twinge of pain shot through it each time I turned my head to look about. The belt, to which my tork and scarbo had been fastened, was gone.
I sat up, and my brain swam dizzily for a moment. My vision cleared presently, and I saw that the source of the light which but faintly illuminated the spot I occupied was a jagged opening—evidently the mouth of a huge cave.
Quite close to me on my left, I became aware that some creature was breathing heavily, apparently in sleep. Turning, I beheld the recumbent form of a gigantic hairy female—head pillowed on arm, and knees drawn up as if for warmth, sleeping not four feet from me.
The face was neither ape nor human, but partook of the characteristics of both. The form, slender of waist, full-breasted and broad-hipped, was more like that of a human female than a she-ape, though covered with short, reddish-brown hair. The limbs were not ungraceful, but the toes were long and evidently prehensile. I judged that the creature, when standing erect, must be at least eight feet in height and so powerfully muscled as to be a formidable antagonist.
Stealthily I stood erect, then tiptoed toward the mouth of the cave. I had not taken more than a dozen steps when something tripped me and I fell headlong to the jagged floor. At the same time there came the sound of a fearful growl behind me.
Before I could scramble to my feet I was pounced upon from behind and jerked erect. Then, with my arms pinioned behind me by two powerful hairy hands, I was marched out into the sunlight. Looking up, to the considerable inconvenience of my injured neck, I saw that my captor was the big female who had been sleeping so peacefully a moment before. She had been awakened by a thin but exceedingly tough twisted string of gut, tied to my ankle and her wrist.
We were high up on a rugged hillside which seemed honeycombed with caves. In the valley far below us, I saw the waving fronds of huge tree-ferns above the tangled mass of jungle vegetation.
“So, food-man, you would escape Chixa, and thus have Chixa slain,” said my captor in a peculiar, clucking patoa.
“It is high time you were taken before Rorg. Perhaps he is hungry.”
“Release my wrists,” I replied, “and I’ll be glad to go with you before Rorg. Who is he, and what has his hunger to do with me?”
“Rorg is the king, the Rogo of the Cave-Apes.” The tall female released my wrists and stepped up beside me, taking a firm grip on my right arm. “If he is hungry he may want to eat you.”
“What makes you think I will be good to eat?” I asked.
“I have tasted the flesh of many food-men, and most of it is good, though it is sometimes too salty. Are you very salty?”
“Very. I’m afraid your ruler would be displeased.”
“If you are very salty he will be greatly pleased,” said Chixa. “He likes salty food-men, though I do not.”
About the furry waist of my captor there was a string like the one bound to my ankle. Swinging from this string on the side opposite me, by a short hook in the handle, was a weapon I greatly coveted.
It was a club of hard wood about three feet in length, shaped something like the blade of an oar, but thicker and heavier, and pointed at the end. Set in the two edges of this club were small bits of sharp flint which gave it a formidable saw-like appearance. It was heavy enough to crush a skull or break a limb, and sharp enough to lacerate the toughest muscle. A large flint knife also swung between her breasts from a cord around her neck.
The cave-ape walking beside me was in some ways like a woman, and because of that faint similarity I hesitated for a moment to carry out the plan which had come to me. But life has ever been dear to me—even though I love adventure so greatly that I have risked death in many terrible forms on three planets—so my hesitation was but momentary.
Suddenly turning with my right arm bent at the elbow, I put all my weight in a blow that landed in the furry solar plexus. With a terrible sound—half scream, half roar—my tall captor clasped her hands to her abdomen and bent over. As she did so I pivoted the other way with a left to the point of her jaw, and she fell unconscious at my feet.
Quickly slipping the knife cord from around her neck, I sawed the gut tether from my ankle. Then I seized the club which dangled from her belt, and looked about me for the most likely avenue of escape.
To my surprise and horror, I saw that there was none, for at the sound of Chixa’s voice, the caves had suddenly spewed forth not less than a thousand of these gigantic creatures, all armed as I now was, with flint knives and sawedged clubs. The mature females varied in height from seven to nine feet and the males from ten to twelve.
Those nearest me had spied me as I got to my feet, and now approached menacingly from all sides with bared fangs and low, throaty growls—the males displaying long, downcurving tusks which greatly increased their ferocious appearance.
With the club held swordlike in my right hand, and the flint knife gripped in my left, I leaped for a great leaning boulder, one side of which could afford me protection from above and behind.
A huge tusked male sprang forward to bar my progress, and swung his saw-edged club in a terrific blow. He was fully eleven feet in height, and towering above me as he did, offered no opportunity for quick club work.
There was, however, a chance to use the knife, which I did without compunction. Leaping beneath his swinging arms, I buried it in the right side of his abdomen and ripped him across the belly. While he swayed drunkenly, I completed my rush to the temporary protection of the boulder, and as I turned with my back against it to meet the attack of the others, I saw him topple to the ground.
A moment later I was confronted by a semicircle of growling, roaring cave-apes, swinging their clubs menacingly, but a little different about approaching me too closely—probably because of what had happened to their companion. Mixed with the growling and roaring I could distinctly hear the patoan words “kill” and “meat,” which sounded ominous enough.
The great tusked males seemed to be working themselves into a frenzy of fury as they came closer and closer—evidently their primitive way of attempting to overcome their fear of me.
Presently one leaped out ahead of the closing line, and swung his club for my head with a terrific downward, two-handed stroke. I stepped to the left, and forward, and as his club was shattered on the stone where I had been standing, the flinty edge of my own bit deeply into his cervical vertebrae. He fell on his face without a sound.
I sprang to a new position, brandishing my club menacingly, and the line of attackers moved back a little.
“Kill! Kill!” The word was repeated constantly now as the savage semicircle closed in once more.
“Come and be killed!” I replied.
“You will be next to die, food-man,” roared a huge male who stood near the center of the line, “for Urg is about to kill you.” Urg stood at least twelve feet in height, a head taller than the other males in the front line, and his great downcurving tusks, fully seven inches in length, gave him a most ferocious aspect.
He seemed about to spring forward, and I had braced myself for his attack, when there was a sudden commotion behind him. The milling crowd of apes drew back respectfully to make way for a huge male, taller and heavier even than Urg.
Just behind him walked two young females, one waving a fern frond to keep annoying insects away from him, while the other carried a huge gourd-like fungus with a bottle neck and a bowl made from a split sporepod. Behind these two walked more ape-maidens, some carrying fresh meat, while others bore bowls heaped high with fragments of edible fungi or sporepods, cracked, and ready for eating.
Coming up behind Urg, the newcomer carelessly pushed him aside and stood in the front line, surveying me with apparent boredom. At this, Urg gave a low growl, whereupon the larger ape smote him in the mouth.
“Growl again at Rorg, and you will feel the weight of his club.”
“I did not know it was Rorg who pushed me,” replied Urg.
“Why do you hesitate before this little food-man?” asked Rorg. “Do you fear him?”
“Of course not,” answered Urg. “I was playing with him. I was about to kill him when you came up.”
“I believe you fear him,” continued Rorg. “I notice he slew your brother, Arg, who was as good a fighter as you. This is unusual for a food-man. He must be a mighty warrior among his people. It shall be for Rorg, mightiest of the cave-apes, to slay him.”
“It is my right to kill him,” growled Urg, “for he slew my brother.”
“He will be killed when and how I ordain, for I am king.” He swung on me once more. “Who are you, food-man,” he asked, “and how did you slay my people?”
“I am Zinlo,” I replied, “and I slew your people with the weapons of Chixa which I took from her.”
“How could you take Chixa’s weapons from her?” asked Rorg incredulously. “Why, she is ten times as strong as you. I do not believe it. Chixa gave you her weapons, so Chixa shall be slain.”
“Chixa lies unconscious on the ground, Rorg,” clucked a female. “This food-man must have taken her weapons by force.”
“Chixa is feigning and shall be slain,” said Rorg. “Such a thing would not be possible. Go and slay her, Urg.”
All this time I had been standing guardedly, saying nothing; but when it became apparent that the female ape was about to be killed through no fault of her own, but because of something I had done, I felt a wave of pity for her. Brute and man-eater though she was, she had been considerate of me. After all, she was something like a woman.
“Rorg,” I said, “I did not lie about taking her weapons from her, and I can prove it.”
“How?”
“By taking the weapons from your strongest warrior in the same manner.”
“Can you take Urg’s weapons from him?” asked Rorg.
“Of course.”
“Then you must be very strong or very clever. I like clever food-men. Sometimes I keep them for a long while when they are exceedingly clever. When they fail to amuse me they die. Let me see you take Urg’s weapons, and I will spare your life for today, at least.”
“But what of Chixa?”
“I will spare her life, also.”
“Good. I will need plenty of room, and I demand your promise that I will not be attacked by any one other than Urg.”
“You will have plenty of room, and you have my word that you will not be attacked or interfered with,” said Rorg.
“Move back, then, all of you,” I said, “until I tell you to stop.”
The crowd drew back until the front line was a hundred feet from the rock in all directions.
“That is enough. Now, Urg, come here and I will take your weapons. I will go unarmed, and you must not have your weapons in your hands. You will walk beside me as if I were your prisoner fastened to a tether.” With this I dropped weapons to the ground.
“It is a trick,” growled Urg, but at Rorg’s command he hung his flint knife around his neck, and hooked his club in the string around his waist. As the brute lumbered up beside me, and I saw what a mighty tower of strength he was, I must confess that I felt considerable doubt about being able to knock him out.
He strode along beside me, his great arms swinging at his sides. I timed my swing for the instant when the great paw nearest me was back, leaving the abdomen unguarded. Then I pivoted, landing my right fist in his solar plexus—all the force I could muster behind it.
With a grunt of surprise, he doubled forward as Chixa had done; but before I could swing for his jaw, he stood erect once more and reached for his club. His chin, by this time, was so high in the air that I could not reach it, and he had his plexus covered by his great forearm; there was nothing I could do with my fists. His shins; however, were exposed; I kicked the right one with my sandaled foot.
Uttering a howl of pain, he raised his foot and launched it at me, whereupon I grasped it with both hands, and twisting it with a sudden jerk that caused the bones to creak, turned his toes downward and his heel upward at the same time. This turned him completely around, and a quick push sent him on his face.
Before he could scramble erect, I leaped on his back, planting a heavy blow just beneath his ear. He shook himself in an effort to dislodge me, but I grasped one of his tusks with my left hand, and with my legs wrapped around him, continued to hammer him behind the furry ear.
Standing erect, he bellowed angrily, and releasing his grip on his club, grasped my left arm in his huge right hand. Wrenching my hand away from his tusk, he jerked me forward over his left shoulder and threw me to the ground fully twenty feet away. Fortunately for me, I alighted on my feet, and although I stumbled and fell, was unhurt.
I saw Urg coming toward me, but he reeled drunkenly.
Quickly springing to my feet, I leaped forward, whereupon he jerked his club from his belt and made a wild swing for my head. As his momentum bent him forward, I dodged, and leaping in, planted a blow in his right eye. He straightened, and I struck him in the solar plexus once more.
This time he doubled up, exposing his jaw, on which I planted a crashing right hook. Once more he stood erect, tottering unsteadily, and once more I doubled him up with a plexus blow, getting in a left to the jaw. He fell on his face as I sprang out of his way, finishing him with a blow behind the ear.
I slipped the knife cord from around his neck, and picked up the great saw-edged club which he had dropped. Then I leaped upon his back, and with one foot on his neck, brandished the weapons aloft, while a great howl went up from the mob around me.
From his place in the center of the line, Rorg walked slowly toward me, attended only by the female with the fern frond. I stepped down from the prostrate body of Urg as he approached, and slung the knife about my neck, also hooking the club in my belt. “Are you convinced?” I asked.
“I am convinced,” replied Rorg. “You are clever enough to be kept alive for a while, and Chixa shall be spared.”
It was then I noticed a gold bangle about Rorg’s wrist. I saw that it was stamped with the coat of arms of Taliboz, and it followed that this must have belonged to one of his retainers.
“Where did you get the man who wore that bangle?” I asked.
“My warriors captured him with twelve other food-men, and a food-woman. We have eaten them all, except one man who is very clever, and the woman, who is very beautiful.”
“Do you know the name of this clever food-man?” I asked.
“His servants called him Lord Taliboz,” was the reply.
“And the food-woman?”
“A royal princess, fit only for royalty. I intend to wed her at the beginning of the next endir. Although I should like to wed her sooner, I will not depart from the customs and traditions of my forefathers, who married but one wife at a time and her at the beginning of each endir, thus taking but ten mates a year. I had intended Chixa for my next wife, but now she will have to wait for another endir.”
“Is it customary for cave-apes to mate with food-people?”
“It is not,” replied Rorg, “but we have no old law against it. I make all the new laws, and I have decreed that, hereafter, all Rogos of the Cave-Apes may marry food-women if they choose to do so.”
“I have a great curiosity to see this food-man who is so clever and this beautiful food-woman,” I said.
“You shall see them,” replied Rorg. “Come with me. I want you to do some more clever tricks, anyway, to amuse my wives and children.”
As I strolled away with Rorg I saw Urg stir slightly, then roll over and sit up, after which he tenderly felt his bruised jaw and the battered spot behind his ear.